Two-man probe team comprises chief conservator of forests who reports to forest minister Sudhir Mungantiwar, under fire for ordering shooting of Avni.
New Delhi: Under fire over the killing of tigress Avni, the Maharashtra government has hurriedly ordered a probe into the move, which people in wildlife circles are expecting to be nothing but an eyewash.
The reason for the scepticism is because one of the two officers who is a part of the probe team is chief conservator of forests Shesh Rao. And Rao reports to Maharashtra’s Environment and Forest Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar, who is himself facing flak for ordering the shooting of the six-year-old tigress.
The other officer is Anish Andheria, president of Wildlife Conservation Trust.
Andheria’s inclusion too has raised questions because he has come out in support of the operation by the Maharashtra’s forest department. In a letter to the principal chief conservator of forest (Wildlife) A.K. Mishra, Andheria had lent support to the efforts of the department to capture or kill Avni.
Sources in the know said the proposed investigation would be a “fake” one which people will see through.
“The inquiry officers are people who are bound to toe the official line and not genuinely probe the killing,” a person familiar with the development told ThePrint.
Tigress Avni or T1, as she was referred to, was shot dead last Saturday by the son of controversial Hyderabad-based hunter Nawab Shafat Ali Khan, who was hired by the Maharashtra forest department for the operation to capture the tigress.
According to the forest department, Avni allegedly killed 13 people, eight of them tribals, in the Pandharkawada-Ralegaon forest of Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district since 2016.
Calling the killing of the mother of two 10-month-old cubs — whose fate continues to remain uncertain — a “cold-blooded murder,” Union minister and animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi has demanded the removal of minister Mungantiwar, who, she says, was wholly party to the killing of the tigress.
Also read: Autopsy of tigress Avni suggests foul play, discredits self-defence theory
What autopsy report says
While the forest department has maintained that the six-year old tigress was shot by Asghar Ali Khan last week in “self-defence”, the postmortem report, accessed by ThePrint, shows clear evidence of foul play.
The report shows that the tigress was shot in her shoulder, with the bullet then tracing a path through her ribs to come out through the other shoulder — a finding which flies in the face of claims made by the forest department that the tigress was shot in self-defence, after an attempt to dart her with sedatives led her to charge at the team.
Sometimes we see news coming out of USA or other western countries in which someone starts shooting indiscriminately and kills 10-20 people in a mall, or a bar, or a university or some such place. The policeman on duty shoots that man dead, and no one asks why that man wasn’t tried to be “captured”.
Mera Bharat Mahaan! An ANIMAL has been killed, who had already killed 14 HUMAN beings, and would have killed many more over time, and here we have a government minister and others asking if “proper procedures were followed or not”!
The answer the Forest Dept. should give to Menka Gandhi and others is simple:
“That animal was a PROVEN man eater. We did not try to capture it because we did not know how we would REFORM it so it would develop a taste for cabbage, turnips and potatoes. If the Honorable minister has a suitable Operations Manual for this purpose, we would request for a xerox copy so we can evolve a Training Course titled, “How to Share Lunch With Tigers”.
Pure nonesense that a predator of human life is to be given a higher status than human being.